Near the start of Sisters, there is a montage of old audio of Kaitlin Prest and her sister Natalie larking about together. There is singing, growling, an “I love you”, an argument and a semi-serious apology (“Sorry I was whiny”), all set against a rhythm that sounds a bit like a beating heart.
The heartbeat motif is no accident. Kaitlin Prest is the award-winning host/producer behind the Peabody-nominated The Heart, an umbrella title for a series of audio projects loosely about life and love. One of those projects, No, an autobiographical mini-series from 2017 about sexual boundaries and consent, is one of the most powerful and intimate podcasts I’ve heard.
In the five-part Sisters, Prest has done it again with a complex, inventive and richly textured portrait of “the trials and tribulations of loving someone since you were born”. The opening episode focuses mostly on Kaitlin and Natalie’s childhoods. Some of the audio comes from old recordings made by their parents, though in other places conversations are recreated according to their memories of what took place.
As the elder sibling, Kaitlin was, in her mind, the centre of her father’s world until Natalie came along and displaced her. As they grew up, Natalie always wanted to copy Kaitlin — “I just saw whatever she was doing and thought it was incredible,” Natalie recalls — while Kaitlin wanted her sister to stop muscling in on the things that she liked. There is a moment when they separately recall taking part in a piano competition, from which Kaitlin emerged with a bronze medal and Natalie won three golds. Kaitlin remembers her deep sadness at the fact that her sister had overshadowed her doing the thing that she, Kaitlin, loved best. Natalie recalls Kaitlin draining away all her joy on the journey home — “Her anger [filled] the entire car.”
Later in the series, their child and adult selves collide as Kaitlin hires Natalie to work with her and the pair slip into old roles: Kaitlin, the leader and instigator of ideas; Natalie, deferential and pleased to be included until resentment creeps in. Kaitlin has been having mental health difficulties, which have been compounded by her professional success and have had an impact on her sister. At one point, we hear Kaitlin talking herself down from a panic attack and Natalie trying to offer comfort.
Reflecting on their dynamic, Kaitlin talks about the rule for lifeguards that they must carry a flotation device to prevent a drowning person from drowning them in panic. “Natalie was the lifeguard who swam out to the drown victim without a flotation device,” she says, “and I was the drown victim in emergency mode trying to get air.”
It’s this extraordinary candour and willingness to be vulnerable that makes Sisters, and indeed all The Heart productions, so compelling. Prest has built a career out of turning deeply personal stories into clever and affecting audio narratives. Sisters is up there with her best.
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